Caravan Site - Overheating supply neutral connection on pitch RCDs

Hi,

Am presently staying at a farm caravan park in south of England and the owner has shown me a problem he is having with some individual pitch electrical devices. Apparently, over time a number of the Type C  16A RCD devices have been affect by the INCOMING supply neutral connection overheating. Seems unlikely to be loose connection on so many devices and device are not tripping. 
site is served by overhead 2 phase connection with single phase distribution to at least 3 sepeate areas built at different times. Pitches are served by buried SWA and marked up as “ring”. RCDs are British supplier and all other connections on the 30mA device are clean and unaffected. Are we looking at an harmonics problem or distribution system fault. All suggestions welcome (It won’t spoil my holiday) Thanks

Dave



  • The IP and IK rating for the enclosure is when the flap is down and closed.  If the flap remains open for some reason IP5X probably becomes IP2X

    The Ip rating for the RCD is probably only IP2X

  • I wonder how many

    Mechanical cycles
    Electrical endurance

    the RCD has had?

  • Hi DMB, probably loose connection but just a thought. Are the pitch sockets connected by actual ring final circuit? Maybe this is a bit out there, but due to the earth rods etc of the pitches there could be a potential difference between these rods/plates buried in the ground. This could make a circulating current in the ring circuit that could also make the neutral connection of the RCDs too hot. The circulating current is a current that goes around in a circle inside a circuit without going through the RCD. 

  • but due to the earth rods etc of the pitches there could be a potential difference between these rods/plates buried in the ground. This could make a circulating current in the ring circuit that could also make the neutral connection of the RCDs too hot.

    not sure I have understood you, I may have the wrong image of your idea or it sounds a bit unlikely to me. Currents in the CPC will not affect the RCDs - it does not even go through them, and the only neutral - earth bond will be at the site transformer or main incomer - on the load side the only time earth ever meets either neutral or live is during a fault, and the RCD fires some tens of milliseconds after.


    However, burnt neutrals really are a thing and really seem to be more common than burnt phases even on single phase parts - cooker switches, shower switches you name it, only this week I was greeted  by a colleague holding some burn out floortrack (the kind that is a bus system to boxes with 13A sockets) with guess what, a burnt neutral, and we shook our heads and both agreed we saw more cooked  N than cooked L. Perhaps makers just cheap out on the neutral terminals or the live side is more likely to self clean and sizzle and then spot weld back to a low resistance state for the same degree of corrosion or whatever ??

    If you do drill the rivets and open it onto a table, post pix if you can - post mortem are always interesting.
    Mike.

  • I appreciate your expertise, but I have a question regarding a possible scenario. What if there is an existing neutral-to-earth fault on the supply ring main, which may not require RCD protection? Could the potential difference between the earth rods then increase the current in the neutral incoming terminal?

  • To be more specific, I am referring to a neutral-to-earth fault on the supply side ring circuit that connects each RCD, not on the load side. Such a fault would not cause an MCB to trip, as you explained.

  • But by definition, the current on the L path through the RCD and the current through the N path can't differ by more than 30mA, or the RCD would have tripped. It doesn't matter what arrangements or faults there are upstream of the RCD. Only if there was a a N-E fault just upstream of the RCD (as in mm or inches) which caused a fault current of many amps to flow (which seems unlikely) could the upstream N get cooked and some of that extra heat get conducted to the N terminal. All seems a bit unlikely.

  • I am referring to the current in the neutral wire of the ring circuit that supplies power to the RCDs, not the current that goes through the RCDs. Also, the earth rods of different pitches may have different voltages between them because of various factors. So, could this make the current in the neutral  of the ring circuit higher?

  • I may have misunderstood the setup, but is it not a ring circuit that supplies power to multiple RCDs? And have they not had several RCDs fail on the supply side only? Is it not the current in the neutral wire that goes around from the distribution board through all the neutral terminals on the line side? The current in the neutral wire can still be balanced through each RCD.

  • What is the rating of the protective device and what is the max demand? If the circuit is on a 40 A breaker, there could be a risk of overloading a 16 A terminal if the load on that terminal exceeds its rating. This could cause overheating and damage to the terminal and its connections.